30 thoughts on “Release: President Forever 2012 v. 1.0.8”

There are some bugs in this release. However, there shouldn’t be anything that causes the game to crash. If you encounter a bug that gives an error message or causes the game to crash, please post it here.

Yes the vote totals. If you can’t find a way to fit them on the state’s screen, when the update pops up that says who won and how many delegates, maybe you can give us the totals. For instance:

Romney – 14,000 (8)
Gingrich – 11,000 (5)
and so on….

That’s the only thing that’s weird, since you work hard to win the state and then the percentages and totals are never given.

Everything else seems good, the only thing is early on in the primary the numbers in the delegates already won view are so jumbled, but as time goes on it expands and gets clearer. Maybe on the swingometer icon have the delegates won there too?

one bug – I’m playing as Obama, I can view my own platform, and Romney’s, but not the other 3 Republican candidates.

I’d like the option of surrogates making up their own minds of where to barnstorm rather than direct them. I’m sure most game-players like to micromanage everything, but I’d like some delegating ability as an option. Or at least, a longterm plan, where one can gave them a month’s schedule and then they follow it, allowing one not to worry about dictating orders to that surrogate every day.

Other notes in this first play-through:

– Gingrich maintains his enormous lead; none of the other candidates really improve. I think Romney might, a little.
– Is Iowa a winner takes all? Gingrich won all 28 delegates in this play-through.
– Santorum can’t rise over 4%
– Gingrich gets the majority of delegates in mid March; None of the candidates drop out.
– Gingrich chooses Romney for VP; in case anyone is wondering

@Jonathan Lol! I had 1800 delegates and Gingrich had 300, the rest had none. Then the convention came and it said Newt Gingrich has a majority of the delegates, Newt wins! And then I get a message saying, thank you for playing now you will be deleted. LOL!

I just played as Ron Paul. I lost the nomination, Gingrich won (he had the majority of the delegates again). It asked if I wanted to continue as Gingrich, I said, “yes”. Then an error message popped up and I wasn’t able to continue the game. I’d click out of the error message and it would keep popping back up.

Also, I’ve noticed that each quick play through I’ve done, the Republican Party is the runaway favorites to win the election every time. Unless I’m mistaken, I think Obama has been up in the polls nearly every month (if not every month) when polled against any of the other competitors. If anything, I’d assume the Obama player’s goal would be to just maintain this lead, and increase it if possible. The Republican’s would have the more uphill challenge of narrowing to a candidate and then appealing to independents and conservative Democrats.

Lastly, I hope that eventually the Republican candidates are closer in % so to make it a near three-way tie or four-way tie. Generally, it’s been Gingrich 45%, Romney 35%, Paul 15%, Santorum 5%

I agree with everything that has been said above. But what I would like to highlight is that we should really get the total votes cast instead of just getting the percentages. That\’s the best part of winning the primary to see how many votes you won or lost by. Losing by 2% in Iowa could be by 2,000 votes but losing by 2% votes in California could be 50,000 votes.

Other points –

– I would like to see Barnstorming be allowed more times, Santorum barnstormed everyday for 2 months up until the Iowa caucus and that\’s how he won.
-Have a more variety of different news stories highlighting the primary race. Like a more accurate account of who\’s leading in the polls, \”Gingrich retakes the lead,\” \”South Carolina is a close race\”
– Have online fundraising

I’m not sure why everyone is center on corruption. I think Gingrich would definitely be right or far-right on that. He’s obsessed with calling the Obama administration “Saul Alinsky Socialism”. It’s sounds very similar to your far-right description of corruption.

Obama might be a little too leftist overall the way you have him. I think he is centrist enough to upset liberal Democrats.

Another note, I’d like to see the General Election map look different based on who is chosen as the Republican nominee. For instance, I think playing a Obama vs Paul matchup would have the most drastic change in the map, since he’s not a mainstream Republican. Overall, I think Obama would have more states beginning in this scenario.

A Gingrich scenario might make it harder for Obama to compete in the South.
A Santorum scenario might make it harder for Obama to win in the tornado states.
Romney scenario will have him more vulnerable in the south, but stronger in cities than the other Republican candidates.

1) When I attack another fellow GOPer in the primary, the recap says that I attacked a “Republican”. Shouldn’t it say the candidate’s name instead of the party they belong to, in this case, the same party Santorum belongs to?

2) Paying extra for +/- polling is pointless as I basically had the same percentage the whole time. The whole time I was near 10.7% but when the results came in for Iowa, I actually got 43.5% of the vote, which is quite ridiculous if I’m actually paying money to get as detailed polling as I can.

3) I agree with the others, percentages are not enough. I’d like to see the raw numbers of how many votes each candidate received.

I strongly agree with the person who said the limit on barnstorming was too small.

Iowa was almost perpetually over-barnstormed, which is unrealistic. You have the idiot computer players off campaigning in Alaska or Alabama, meanwhile I’m trying hard to win in the early states, but barnstorming power gets lower and lower.

Also, I wonder if the “barnstorm power breakdown”window could maybe be organized into some type of a table? It’s kind of hard to look for the power totals of each issue in such a big block of text.

And, lastly……. will there ever be an option to play the primaries week-by-week instead of day-by-day? I kind of liked that I could sit down and finish the primaries in about an hour or so, but now it seems like it takes an hour just to get to iowa.

I liked having the primary in days because it really allows you to focus on each state, with the weeks, if you lost the early states you couldn’t catch up with the calendar. Maybe you can do a skip screen? After everyone drops out of the primary have a screen that pops up that asks if you want to fast forward to the convention or continue as is? That seems like a fair way to fix the problem of a long boring intermission.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Now that all the major parts of the game are in place, the focus will shift to gameplay and computer player AI. All the stuff like computer players not dropping out after the primaries are finished, them campaigning in states where it doesn’t make sense, and so on, will be addressed probably in the next few releases.

@Rz,

“Everything else seems good, the only thing is early on in the primary the numbers in the delegates already won view are so jumbled, but as time goes on it expands and gets clearer.”

Ya, this is a problem. We’ll see.

@Hagrid,

“I’m wondering if you might be able to add a category for the date of the primary/caucus on the strategy screen. Just to make it a bit more user-friendly.”

It already lists them by default in the primaries according to date (and there is an icon for this at the top of the table). Or do you mean to display all the dates for the primaries at once on the screen, instead of when you hover over one?

@Jonathan,

“one bug – I’m playing as Obama, I can view my own platform, and Romney’s, but not the other 3 Republican candidates. ”

Noted.

“Is Iowa a winner takes all? Gingrich won all 28 delegates in this play-through.”

Well … it’s complex. This is noted – probably will change it to PR.

@Rz,

“Ok I just encountered a huge glitch! I won the primary by a landslide (as Romney) and at the convention they said Newt won?”

This bug is top of the list to fix.

@Jonathan,

“I just played as Ron Paul. I lost the nomination, Gingrich won (he had the majority of the delegates again). It asked if I wanted to continue as Gingrich, I said, “yes”. Then an error message popped up and I wasn’t able to continue the game. I’d click out of the error message and it would keep popping back up. ”

Thanks – noted.

@PM,

“I would like to see Barnstorming be allowed more times, Santorum barnstormed everyday for 2 months up until the Iowa caucus and that\’s how he won.”

Can you say more about what you mean by this? Currently, Santorum (say) could barnstorm in Iowa 3 times per day every day until the caucuses there.

@Jonathan,

“I’d like to see the General Election map look different based on who is chosen as the Republican nominee.”

Yes, this should occur once the regional candidate bonuses are inputted.

@GOPGipper43,

“And how do you make offers?”

Can’t make offers yet.

@Hagrid,

“I wonder if the “barnstorm power breakdown”window could maybe be organized into some type of a table? It’s kind of hard to look for the power totals of each issue in such a big block of text.”

Yes, I’ll look at how to make this more clear.

“will there ever be an option to play the primaries week-by-week instead of day-by-day?”

This will be modified with gametesting. Rz’s idea is one I had – to allow an option to skip ahead to the conventions, say.

@Jonathan,

“I was curious what one would need to do to get a 1 in Integrity or Debating.”

It just means very poor. Once politicians make it to the national scene, they usually aren’t ‘very poor’ in any area – otherwise, they wouldn’t be on the national scene .. I would give Palin a 2 for Debating (poor). I would be more likely to give her a 1 for Issue Familiarity than for Debating.

Agree that Iowa and NH need to allow to do much more brainstorming before it begins to be counter productive.

Dates or how many days away the primary is would be good in the strategy screen would be good rather than just listing them in order.

santorum could be a more distinctive colour

Also it is to biased in favour of republicans I played as Ron Paul on medium won the nomination and was then ahead for the entirety of the general election. I think the problem is that because you carry over your campaign structure from the primary into the general you have huge lead in that department when it comes to the general. Obama either needs to be much more aggressive in setting up a structure through GOP primary which would replicate real life. I also think that the campaign structure you set up in a primary shouldn’t be equivocal to the structure of a general election. eg, if you create two footsoldiers in primary it goes down to one in general. But thats me.

love the game though, in the long run would be great if you made a program to mod it, easily all the different scenarios available are one of the great things about the series of games.

I encountered a bug where I could not see where the CPs were being devoted to when I clicked on the icon. I was playing as Ron Paul if it matters.
The error message reads “Access violation at address 00421542 in module ‘p4e12.exe’. Read of address 00000004.”

In the next version, Energy Points are increased more quickly, and Barnstorming Power doesn’t drop as quickly. This should allow for a more accurate representation of Santorum’s strategy, which basically was to camp out in Iowa and Barnstorm.

@Dan,

Thank you for the bug report – this has been fixed in the latest internal version, and will be in the next update.

@Chris,

Thanks for the feedback!

First, see the note above about Santorum and Barnstorming.

“Dates or how many days away the primary is would be good in the strategy screen would be good rather than just listing them in order. ”

They are already listed this way in the Strategy Screen – do you mean showing all the dates at once instead of just for the primary the mouse is hovering over?

“Obama either needs to be much more aggressive in setting up a structure through GOP primary which would replicate real life.”

Yes, this is a good point and will occur when the computer player AI is improved. Up until this point, it has been getting the major aspects of game mechanics in place. Now, it’s focusing on game play, computer player AI, and adding features.